Releasing gold from sewerage waste

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ekkemyself

New member
Joined
Jun 29, 2011
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2
We are cleaning a municipal sewerage works. The sewerage contains on average 5g per ton of gold. We use a gravitation method to seperate the heavy metals from the waste. Any ideas as to what would be the best method to seperate and refine the gold?
 
ekkemyself said:
We are cleaning a municipal sewerage works. The sewerage contains on average 5g per ton of gold. We use a gravitation method to seperate the heavy metals from the waste. Any ideas as to what would be the best method to seperate and refine the gold?
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I was trying to work through in my head how you could possibly come to have over 5 ppm of gold in your sewage (maybe the plant is located near the Goldschlager distillery?) :mrgreen: Then I noticed you are in South Africa - so maybe that concentration wouldn't be so unusual in some places there.

Whatever methods you "settle" on - make sure to wash your hands! :p
 
I you decide to process the wase on your own, get a good assay, especially for toxic elements like Mercury and Lead. This may turn out to be a big can of worms, especially if there is Mercury involved.
 
I have an interest in this, at what point in the process are you separating your heavy metals? is it raw before or after screening and grit removal etc?

I would also be interested in the method you use to separate as nearly all our gravitational separations are used to generate sludge, and Id think you might be better off working with sea water.....

This forum never ceases to amaze me, the amount of knowledge and variety of topics is really interesting
 
Militoy said:
I was trying to work through in my head how you could possibly come to have over 5 ppm of gold in your sewage (maybe the plant is located near the Goldschlager distillery?) :mrgreen: Then I noticed you are in South Africa - so maybe that concentration wouldn't be so unusual in some places there.

Whatever methods you "settle" on - make sure to wash your hands! :p
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How the gold came to be in the sewerage is a long story, but yes, the place is a mining town with many gold mines. Will wash the hands, thanks!

Irons said:
I you decide to process the wase on your own, get a good assay, especially for toxic elements like Mercury and Lead. This may turn out to be a big can of worms, especially if there is Mercury involved.
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Definately lots of mercury.

4metals said:
Is the concentration of gold 5 grams per ton before you use the gravity concentration or after, and how was the gold concentration determined?
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Before the gravity concentration.

colibri said:
I have an interest in this, at what point in the process are you separating your heavy metals? is it raw before or after screening and grit removal etc?

I would also be interested in the method you use to separate as nearly all our gravitational separations are used to generate sludge, and Id think you might be better off working with sea water.....

This forum never ceases to amaze me, the amount of knowledge and variety of topics is really interesting
Click to expand...

We are cleaning the digester tanks. The works has never been cleaned since it was built about 25 years ago. We pump the sewerage from the tanks, after treating it to make it runny again. It dries in the sun and then we process the dried stuff, together with the top soil. We screen it and then seperate the heavy metals in a specially designed machine at 9 g's. It is the further processing of the concentrate to extract the gold that have me stumped. We are 800km from the sea, therefore the use of seawater is precluded.
 
How concentrated is the gold after concentrating? The gold must be finely divided to be detectable in samples of the sludge at that low concentration. That would mean it came from workers tracking about on their shoes the ground up material from the crushing process. At that point it is like flour, the good part is it is small enough to leach effectively.
 
ekkemyself said:
--snip--

We are cleaning the digester tanks. The works has never been cleaned since it was built about 25 years ago. We pump the sewerage from the tanks, after treating it to make it runny again. It dries in the sun and then we process the dried stuff, together with the top soil. We screen it and then seperate the heavy metals in a specially designed machine at 9 g's. It is the further processing of the concentrate to extract the gold that have me stumped. We are 800km from the sea, therefore the use of seawater is precluded.
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Ah right that would be a nice collection, I know they cleaned out a digester on one of our sites that had been running for about 7 years and it was a 1/3 full of grit. Given its a tank 3 stories high and about 30ft in diameter it was rather a lot. Not that it really matters but I guess you'd be using a centrifuge to separate? Are you using poly? I dont know whether this might have a impact on the recovery process?

No hope of getting gold from our waste, theres not enough gold mines around here :)

Good luck
 

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